 The inter-annual variability in the Baltic sea ice cover is strongly influenced by large-scale atmospheric circulation and recent progress in forecasting of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO, provides the possibility of skillful seasonal predictions of Baltic sea ice conditions. A state-of-the-art forecast system can explain as much as 30% of the observed variability in annual maximum ice extent over the period 1993 to 2012, and this skill is derived from the predictability of the NAO by using statistical relationships between the NAO and MIE in observations. This article was authored by Alexei Yukarpechko, Kay Andrew Peterson, Adam Ascafe and others.